Kelly Ripa is right about wisdom of getting tattoos

CARPENTER

An odd coincidence occurred Wednesday morning, in part involving a delightful former ballerina named Kelly Ripa, who appears every weekday morning on a live television program with some drip.

I am not a big fan of daytime television, but my wife often watches that show, so sometimes I catch parts of it before I wander off. On this one, the drip was absent and was replaced by a man whose name I did not catch, but the talk show talk turned to tattoos and what they symbolize.

"Mine is a symbol of my stupidity," Ripa said, in a succinct reference to the small tattoo of a rose and a snake on her left ankle. She is not only delightful; she is eloquent.

The coincidence was that I had just read Wednesday's paper, which included a tasteless photograph of a Richland Township woman's disfigured leg. This was not just an ankle; it was an entire leg covered with grotesque tattoos.

I find it irrational that we live in a culture where a newspaper that would never display the genuine natural beauty of a woman's breast would display that repellant leg.

A story with the photograph said the leg had won a second-place trophy for "best overall tattoo on a woman" at the Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention last month. This tattoo was gouged into the woman's leg by the Chalice Body Art Tattoos joint in Quakertown. The story said 16 percent of Americans now have tattoos -- as if the photo was not depressing enough.

Without doubt, many people will blame my bad attitude about tattoos on the fact that I am a geezer who grew up when entertainment industry icons included people like Cary Grant and another former ballerina, Audrey Hepburn.

Try to imagine Grant or Hepburn sporting tattoos. It is impossible. Too much class.

In addition to geezerdom, I have the disadvantage of journalistic duties, exposing me to the underbelly of culture. I've been to Ku Klux Klan rallies, I have met members of street gangs, I have interviewed prostitutes and strippers, and I have spent time in prisons.

(Please note that, except for one brief episode in which I was innocent, I've never been in jail involuntarily. It always was in the line of duty.)

There is no escaping the fact that, in the main, tattoos represent the lowest forms of human subculture, notwithstanding the rose and snake blemish on Ripa's left ankle.

Which of today's cultural icons get tattoos?

The late great Anna Nicole Smith is one example, as is Justin Timberlake, who, alas, is still alive and serving as a role model for our youngsters. Mike Tyson is a poster boy for the glories of ugly tattoos, and Eminem has one that says "Slit here" on his wrist. The largest concentrations appear at gatherings of street gangs, at Kluxer rallies and in prisons.

Even in the prisons, by the way, there are distinct social classes. Generally, the upper crust includes organized crime people and bank robbers. "Only punks get tattoos," an organized crime figure once told me when I visited him at the Lewisburg federal prison.

So those are the kinds of people that 16 percent of our society wants to emulate.

I am sure I'll soon hear from some parts of that 16 percent about how tattoos are becoming socially acceptable.

To me, that is like saying venereal disease is socially acceptable if it becomes more prevalent. (Am I saying that getting a tattoo is comparable to VD? No, that would be an insult to people with VD, who did not get it on purpose .)

I don't care how many folks argue that tattoos are more popular. To me, they are ugly and depraved self-mutilations that appeal to the least refined segments of the human race.

It is refreshing to hear a rare voice of reason -- as in the case of Kelly Ripa's moment of clarity on Wednesday.